'American Idol' Top 9 talk Stevie Nicks: 'My favorite mentor ever'

The "American Idol" Top 9 might be a very diverse group of singers with different outlooks on life, but they can all agree on one thing: Stevie Nicks is the best mentor they've ever had.

"She was amazing," gushes Jessica Sanchez.

DeAndre Brackensick agrees. "My favorite mentor ever," he tells Zap2it. "She came so prepared. She stayed up until like 4:00 in the morning the night before listening to all of our songs. She helped us be an artist not a product, which is what I really loved. She focused on what we wanted. I loved her."

Skylar Laine also appreciates the helpful advice Nicks gave. "Stevie was awesome. She did her homework. She came in and said 'I spent two hours last night listening to your songs and I still listened to them on the way here this morning.' I was like 'Dang.' No other mentor has said that to us. It was awesome because you felt so much respect for her and you just knew that she really cared about the mentoring. She wasn't just there beause she was asked to be there. She really wanted to help us."

For Elise Testone, the mentoring experience was especially wonderful because she actually got to sing with the Fleetwood Mac frontwoman.

"I said, 'I sing your music,' and Jimmy [Iovine] was like 'Well here Stevie, why don't you sing a song together?' We sang 'Dreams.' She sang the chorus and I harmonized above her. I just jumped right in -- it was like we had been playing together forever."

In fact, the familiarity was apparent as soon as Testone and Nicks met. "There are certain people that I meet that I instantly feel like I have been friends with them or we know each other," she says. "I felt that way with Steven Tyler, and I felt that way with her. There's just something that we have that we just clicked. We were just friends. I was so excited and I couldn't stop giggling."

But even more exciting than meeting such an industry legend was the fact that she gave such thoughtful, helpful advice -- something every single finalist mentioned they loved about Nicks.

"Stevie Nicks was the one person who actually changed our perspective towards the mentor," Heejun Han explains. "A couple of past weeks we had a mentor who wasn't prepared, who pretty much just wanted to have their own [moment in the spotlight], but Stevie Nicks was really well-prepared and I think she's the best mentor we've had so far."

And who, exactly could Han be referring to? We'll let this exchange between Colton Dixon and Phillip Phillips speak for itself:

"I was really excited that we walked in and we had a rock singer in there," Dixon says. "I was so tickled to death about that. I was like finally! Not that Diddy couldn't relate to my music, but..."